Frances Dinkelspiel had worked as a journalist for two decades—reporting for the Syracuse Newspapers and the San Jose Mercury News—before she and two other colleagues started Berkeleyside.com. In Dinkelspiel’s opinion Berkeley is too interesting a city not to have its own hyperlocal news site. “The University of California’s here it has this really long liberal radical political tradition it’s the Mecca for foodies it has all this interesting stuff going on and there’s not a lot of coverage” she says.